PVC related disposable glove is a widely used everyday product. PVC Related Disposable gloves refer to the disposable gloves that are made with a PVC resin mixture, a mixture of PVC resin and other materials, as the raw materials. The other materials refer to any plastic products that compatible with PVC resin. When the mixing ratio of other materials is 0, the so called mixture becomes pure PVC resin, but in this article it is also referred to as PVC related resin mixture. The disposable gloves made with a mixture of PVC resin and other compatible materials have equal or similar performances with that of the disposable gloves made with pure PVC resin.
PVC related disposable gloves have good properties in elasticity and strength. They are comfortable and convenient to use for hand protections, therefore are widely used in the fields of domestic usages, hospitals and food industries.
Currently the commonly applied traditional manufacturing process for manufacturing the PVC related disposable gloves include the following steps:                Step 1. Mixing a PVC resin with a plasticizer such as octyl phthalate (DOP) or diisononyl phthalate (DINP) or any other plasticizers to form a paste, and the purpose is to make the gloves soft.        Step 2. Adding large amount of viscosity modifier, a type of low aromatic solvent oil, into the paste mentioned above to make it thinner and become the diluted paste, in order to reduce the glove weights.        Step 3. Pumping the diluted paste mentioned above into a dipping tank.        Step 4. Using a chain to drive many ceramic, or metal, hand shaped glove formers into the dipping tank, so that the lower part of the formers is coated with a layer of thinned paste.        Step 5. Driving the formers with the chain into an oven for heating them up, evaporating the viscosity modifier solvent from the paste layer, and making the layer of the thinned paste on the surface of the formers become a thin plastic film according to the shape of hand shaped formers.        Step 6. Chaining the formers with the plastic films on the surfaces out of the oven for cooling down.        Step 7. Peeling the plastic films on the former surfaces manually or automatically to pick up the formed gloves and counting and packing them.        Step 8. Driving the clean formers after the gloves are peeled into the dipping tank again to make them go into the next production cycle.        
The above conventional manufacturing process for the PVC related disposable gloves was invented in the United States at the beginning of the last century. It is a typical outdated manufacturing process with high pollution and high labor intensity. The industry of manufacturing PVC related disposable gloves migrated to the Mainland China from Taiwan in the 1980's and 1990's. Since then, about 98% of the production capacity of this industry worldwide has been relocated into China but the conventional manufacturing process has not been principally changed. The disadvantage of this conventional process is using large amounts of a type of oil as the solvent or “viscosity modifier” added into the paste of material mixture. The only purpose for adding the solvent oil is to make the paste thinner to reduce glove thicknesses and weights. The solvent oil is completely evaporated in the oven and released into the atmosphere. This is the so called volatile organic compounds (VOC) which forms smog and causes serious air pollutions.
According to the actual production statistics, the average VOC emission is about 0.26 tons per every ton of PVC Disposable gloves made with the conventional process described above, which will go directly into the atmosphere as a pollutant. The annual production output of the PVC disposable gloves is about 500 thousand tons, which means about 130 thousand tons of VOC pollutants emitted into the atmosphere every year in China. It is extremely difficult and financially impossible to effectively recover these contaminants with the existing technologies. This pollutant is also very difficult to degrade in the atmosphere. It normally takes more than five years for their complete degradation. This VOC pollutant floating in the air reacts with sulfuric acid and nitric acid to form haze or smog and PM2.5 particles which cause great harm to human health. In China, wherever the PVC Disposable gloves factories are concentrated, the air qualities are all among the worst areas, where one of the pollution sources is the VOC emissions from the manufacturing process of the PVC disposable gloves.
At the same time, the solvent oil or viscosity modifier completely evaporated in the oven of this conventional manufacturing process of the PVC Disposable gloves represents nearly 20% the total cost of the gloves. The high-speed operation of the production line driven by the former chain makes the operators always work in a high intensive way. In the summer, the heat emission from the ovens makes the operators working in extremely harsh environment at the room temperature up to 50° C. that heatstroke occurs frequently among the operators.
This outdated manufacturing process for PVC disposable gloves exists all over China this way without any principle changes till today, resulting in large amounts of pollutions and other series of disastrous consequences in the society. It is necessary to develop a new process with model technology to replace this old method for less pollution and other social benefits.